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An influencers’ guide to COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

There’s no doubt you’ve heard about COVID-19, the global virus pandemic that affects us all. Not only is it detrimental to people’s health but it impacts travel, businesses, and the day-to-day running of people’s lives.

As a self-employed influencer, you might be concerned about how Corona affects you. Perhaps a brand has cancelled a campaign, or needs to delay payment - either way, your business is impacted.

It’s a sign of uncertainty which is scary for most to deal with. In this post, we provide you with strategies and resources to help you navigate your personal and work life so you can deal with COVID-19 in the best way possible.

DISCLAIMER: This information in this post including text and images are for informational purposes only. They seek to provide a broader understanding of the current state of the world but should not be taken as medical advice. If you have medical concerns about Corona, please seek advice from your official organisations.

Communicate

If you’re suffering from the virus yourself, or self-isolating to avoid it, make sure you communicate with those around you. It’s very easy to feel extremely isolated if you’re living alone or staying away from those most vulnerable.

The great thing about the Internet is that allows us to communicate with people without ever having to be in the same room as them. Use Skype or social media to check-in with your friends and loved ones. Reach out to your network if you start to feel sick and make sure the people closest to you have everything they need too.

Above all, remember the reasons we’re encouraged to self-isolate and perform social distancing. Although the virus is horrible to contract, it impacts the elderly and people with underlying health conditions in a more severe way. Therefore, by distancing ourselves from these people, we hope to slow down the spread of the virus until it reaches a point of containment.

Look after your health

Your health comes before everything. In such uncertain times, it’s important you keep your own health and the health of those around you as your top priority. If you can avoid non-essential contact and non-essential activities.

It also means making sure you get enough nutrients. In order to fight a virus, your health needs to be in the best shape. Make sure you eat enough each day and eat the right types of food.

In the same way you look after your body, look after your mind too. Headspace, a guided meditation app is going free for healthcare professionals until the end of the year. If you’re an influencer (based in the US) with a healthcare accreditation, consider downloading the app to help ease the burden of the challenge we all currently face.

If you’re not a healthcare professional, you can make use of the iOS app, Dark Noise offers a wide range of different noises, from campfires, rains, thunderstorms etc. The app is a simple way to help you relax and stay calm or focussed during difficult times.

Normally the app would cost $3.99, but the developers have offered it to everyone in the hope it will help people stimulate sounds they’re unable to hear due to self-isolation or quarantine.

Exercise at home

Exercise has proven to reduce stress and help you feel better both physically and mentally.

But as you can imagine, the gym is not the best place to go if you’re trying to do social distancing.

Online personal trainers make it easy to have personal training experience from the comfort of your own home.

Failing that, Youtube offers a range of free workout videos you can follow. What’s more, many of them don’t require any equipment. You simply need to clear enough space to perform the exercises safely.

Down Dog, a popular yoga app has offered all its apps for free, due to Corona. You can download, Yoga, Yoga for beginners, Barre, HIIT, and 7-minute workout completely free. Corona is causing people to avoid gathering in large groups like yoga studios - but the team behind Down Dog understand its times like these when we all need wellness practices.

Planet fitness are also doing their bit to encourage people to stay fit and active - while at home. They offer a series of live workouts that are streamed via Facebook. These happen every day and what’s more, they’re completely free for everyone.

Offer additional services and reach out to old brands

If you’re worried about how you’ll make a living while we are potentially locked down. Consider offering additional services. Some brands might ramp down their services, but they have needs for other services. Maybe you could offer video editing or photo editing.

If you’re finding that brands are cancelling existing campaigns, use the opportunity to reach out to older brands. Brands you’ve worked in the past who has a good experience with you would definitely keep you front of mind for upcoming campaigns if you let them know about your availability.

Failing that, instead of waiting for brands to come to you, use a tool like the brand catalogue that allows you to reach out directly to the brand you want to work with.

Consider content usage rights

When you work with a brand, you often assign content usage rights, this dictates where a brand can use your content. Content usage rights usually last for 6 to 12 months. After that time, brands are no longer able to use your content on their own social channels or paid media.

But with the increase in brands wanting to use influencer content within their paid social campaigns, it’s a great opportunity to sell your content to brands with an additional time-period for usage. You could reach out to brands who previously had rights to your content and offer them an additional 6 months with a discount. Or you could reach out to new brands and see if they’d like rights to your content.

For brands, this is beneficial as it means they have access to a content library they can use to create authentic content.

Look out for financial support

In the current climate, many countries understand that this hurts self-employed people in a bad way. If they are unable to work then they’re unable to earn an income. Check with your relevant official government documents to see what support they offer. Some might offer:

Statutory sick pay

The ability to pause or postpone mortgage payments

Loans

Either way, there’s no harm seeing what options are available to you.

Let’s all pull together

This global virus really does affect us all. However, what it does highlight is that in times like this, we need to pull together communities, cities and countries. If anything, be kind to those around you and offer support where you can.

If you have any questions or concerns about Coronavirus or existing campaigns with ZINE, please get in touch here.